The answer surprises many people. Stage 4 is where the DBS process moves beyond administration and into local police checks. At that point, processing times depend on factors such as police force workloads, multiple address histories, and whether a manual review is required. One of the biggest misconceptions is that a delay means there's a problem with the application. In reality, most Stage 4 delays are simply caused by queues, backlogs, and the complexity of the checks bein